In case you missed it…

If you’re like me, you try to cut down your weekend Interweb connectivity to the occasional check-in, rather than staying glued to it on work days in a manner not unlike Alex’s reprocessing in A Clockwork Orange.

For those of you who missed out as a result, here’s a trio of Spurs links from the weekend:

People flipped out when they heard Ginobili was doing an “Ask Me Anything” mailbag at reddit.com, and rightfully so. It’s chock full of interesting details about your favorite Argentine, including: How he found out about being drafted by the Spurs, how the ravages of time have influenced his hairstyle, and how Gregg Popovich isn’t really like the surly curmudgeon he plays so well on TV.

Our own Mike Finger has done a wonderful job over the years monitoring the story of how Buford and family sponsored African teenager Alexis Wangmene when he was 15. Grantland’s Jonathan Abrams fleshes out this incredible tale with the type of detail you can only get in long form journalism, such as how Buford’s wife Beth accompanied “Lex” halfway around the world to his mother’s funeral back home in Cameroon.

It’s easy to tell that the Spurs are vastly improved on defense from last season, where breakdowns in what used to be their foundation played a major role in their collapse against Oklahoma City. NBA.com’s John Schuhmann learned exactly how at the recent Sloan Sports Analytics Conference, where Buford revealed that the Spurs adopted Boston’s philosophy of focusing less on rebounding than contesting as many shots as possible.